A disaster recovery plan is a short document that answers one question: if our systems stop today, what do we do first? Writing it down is most of the value.
Decide what matters
List your critical systems, such as email, accounting, the till and the website. Decide how long you can be without each one and how much recent data you can afford to lose.
Write the plan
Keep it to a page or two.
- Who is called first, with phone numbers
- Where the backups are and how to restore them
- Which system comes back first
- How customers and staff are told
- Where a printed copy of the plan is kept
Practise once
Once a year, restore a backup and walk through the plan. The first practice always finds something missing, and it is far better to find it on a quiet day.